


ambiguity of expression

by celestixl



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: it's all ok tho, nursey's sad which makes me sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 17:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9914342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestixl/pseuds/celestixl
Summary: When Derek comes back from winter break, there’s something subdued about him.Dex isn’t sure where or when something changed. But there’s a quietness to the way Nursey moves now, a stillness in his words that wasn’t always there before. Nursey walks into the Haus and the smile’s still there, the one that hits Dex like a good check, but then he turns away from the kitchen and towards where Dex is sitting on the biohazard of a couch, and for a second Dex sees the smile slip off the planes of Nursey’s face. Just for a moment, when Nursey is facing that in-between zone, when Dex shouldn’t be looking but is, the tilt of Nursey’s mouth and the angle of his forest eyes suddenly feel heavy, restrained. And then their eyes meet, and Nursey’s lips are more smirk than smile, and the moment passes.Dex scowls and returns his gaze to his laptop screen.He doesn’t know how he feels about this Nursey.





	

When Derek comes back from winter break, there’s something subdued about him. 

Dex isn’t sure where or when something changed. But there’s a quietness to the way Nursey moves now, a stillness in his words that wasn’t always there before. Nursey walks into the Haus and the smile’s still there, the one that hits Dex like a good check, but then he turns away from the kitchen and towards where Dex is sitting on the biohazard of a couch, and for a second Dex sees the smile slip off the planes of Nursey’s face. Just for a moment, when Nursey is facing that in-between zone, when Dex shouldn’t be looking but is, the tilt of Nursey’s mouth and the angle of his forest eyes suddenly feel heavy, restrained. And then their eyes meet, and Nursey’s lips are more smirk than smile, and the moment passes. 

Dex scowls and returns his gaze to his laptop screen. 

He doesn’t know how he feels about this Nursey. 

Dex knows that he hasn’t grown any less fiery in the three weeks away from Samwell. There wasn’t anything to prompt any change in him. After all, all he did was go from one wild family to another: trading reckless hockey bros for a whole screaming pod of younger siblings. Their antics are eerily similar. 

Take, for example, the SMH team and the extended Poindexter family when confronted with a fresh snowfall. The first up will start throwing things up to the top bunk (socks, pillows, even textbooks), which land on the still sleeping figure above, and very likely proceed to jump on them to complete the process of waking them up. The two will exit the home, gather handfuls of snow, and dump them on their next unsuspecting victim. Said victim, likely pants-less, and perhaps even underwear-less, will chase the two offenders into the front yard, where he will suddenly realize it’s fucking freezing, yell that as loudly as possible, and then retreat into the warm home. Woken by the screaming, the most responsible of each household will rouse themself and begin making coffee and hot chocolate, before bundling up and running into the snow alongside the rest of the home’s inhabitants, all of whom have now been woken up by either shouting, a rude handful of snow to the face, or being jumped on. From there on, chaos ensues: snowball fights, fort- and snowman-building, ice skating on the nearest pond or lake. 

Yeah. Sometimes it worries Dex how alike his two families are.

But now -- there’s something off. No one else seems to notice Nursey’s uncharacteristic quietness. It’s true that it’s not very obvious, and Dex wonders just when did he become so in tune with Nursey. 

It worries Dex, and he wonders when it started to matter so much.

At the next kegster, Dex finds Chowder playing beer pong with Farmer against two of her volleyball friends, Nursey nowhere in sight despite the fact that Chow’s on Nursey Patrol. Dex threads his way through the crowd, eyes searching for Nursey. 

He finds him sitting on the porch steps, elbows on his knees, hunched over himself in a way that doesn’t feel like Nursey, a half-finished beer by his side. 

“No dancing for tonight?” Dex asks lightly, an offset to the heavy way he sits now that some of his fine motor control has been destroyed by alcohol. 

Derek startles -- when did he become Derek in Dex’s mind? -- before settling again, his posture opening: elbows resting back on the step behind him, one leg stretched out. 

Dex wonders what his expression was like before. 

Now it sits calm, collected, smooth. Porcelain. Nursey’s eyes are warm in the shadows cast from the lights inside, his jaw angular but relaxed. Lips soft. Mouth closed. There’s the feeling of spiderweb cracks under Dex’s fingertips when he imagines running them across the ridge of Nursey’s cheekbone, down his cheek, tracing the lines of his neck. 

Dex doesn’t lift his hand. 

“I took pity on Chowder,” Nursey replies finally, and Dex isn’t sure how long they’d sat there, staring at each other. “Figured he deserved an unstressful night.” 

There’s something in the twist of Nursey’s lips that twists the veins, the organs inside Dex’s ribcage tight, caught somewhere between sad and angry -- at whom, at what, he wasn’t sure.

But not at Derek. 

“It’s not stressful, you know. Or annoying or anything, not nearly as close to as much as we like to complain.” Nursey just looks at him. “Looking after you, during kegsters,” Dex elucidates. 

Nurse shakes his head. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better, you know.”

“I’m not,” Dex replies heatedly, now just a tiny, tiny bit angry at Nursey too. 

The look Nursey levels at him takes Dex’s breath away. 

Nursey looks… Disbelieving, yes. A little. But mostly he looks like he doesn’t care. Like he’s given up. Like it doesn’t matter anymore whether Dex is lying or not. 

Dex doesn’t do anything, feels frozen to the spot as he watched Nurse shake his head slightly, say, “Don’t stress it, Dexy,” stand up, and make his way back into the Haus. 

By the time Dex can physically peel himself from the stairs, shaking off the weight in Nursey’s gaze, the kegster feels even more packed somehow, even wilder. It’s probably getting close to 2 AM by now, and Dex threads his way through the crowd, asking first a generously drunk Chowder if he’s seen Nursey (“sorry, Dex! I lost track of him after he didn’t start dancing by 11:30!”), then Ransom and Holster (“Nurse? Isn’t Chow on Patrol tonight?”), even some random kids (“is that the english major, the one with the curly hair? He’s cuuuute,” complete with a few suggestive winks). Dex shrugs them off, cheeks burning. He even checks some of the upstairs rooms that he’s sure no one’s in. 

No Nursey. 

He’s halfway down the street in nothing but a light jacket in the middle of February before he entirely registers that he’s headed to Nursey’s dorm. He barely feels the cold though -- filled with purpose and the remnants of liquid fire in the form of alcohol. 

He’s standing in front of Nursey’s door soon enough, but it’s not soon enough, because suddenly he’s nervous. He doesn’t entirely know why he’s here -- all Dex knows is that while change is ok, even good, there’s something about the change in Nursey that makes him want to punch whoever started it. 

Dex knocks on the door while the anger of that thought is still buzzing through his fingers. 

The door opens, revealing Nursey in shorts and a soft, threadbare t-shirt, blinking in the sudden light from the hallway. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move out of the doorway -- just watches Dex, not expectant, not angry, not really anything. 

Dex hates the lack of emotion in Nursey’s eyes. 

But he doesn’t know how to react to it. 

Their modus operandi is chirps, playful jabs, bickering, pushing each other’s buttons until one of them explodes, the yelling that ensues, the day of avoiding the other until they can’t even remember what they were arguing about, and the calm, the ease with which they fit back together when they find each other again. 

Dex pushes. 

“Why don’t you ever believe me? You’re not always right, you know.” 

His voice is low, heated. 

Nursey’s supposed to answer with the same tone -- push back, and back, and back, until they’re both meeting at the middle, stubborn and hotheaded each in their own way, and the inevitable explosion occurs. 

It’s a simple matter of counting down, of timing it just right.

Nursey doesn’t push back. 

One shoulder comes up; his head dips in acknowledgement of Dex’s second point. His eyes meet Dex’s, and he starts to close the door. 

“Wait-- Nurse,” Dex says desperately, sticking out a hand to catch the door. Nursey acquiesces, the door swings open, and Dex steps into Nursey’s room, letting the door drift shut behind him. 

“I. I wasn’t lying. Nursey Patrol? Sometimes it’s the highlight of my night.” Dex swallows, suddenly uncomfortable with that admission. It’s the truth, though: showing up at the Haus after a boring Friday to find Holster and Ransom stringing white Christmas lights up through the living room, Chowder tackling him to yell “you’ve got Nursey tonight!” in victory, Dex grumbling and acting put off but in actuality, he’s already smiling thinking about the way Nursey softens with alcohol, the way his words slur and slip over each other until a moment of shocking elucidation, during which he usually drops some eloquent compliment about Dex’s freckles until Dex is flushed through, but Nursey’s already halfway to the dance floor, unaware of his effect on Dex. The ease with which Nursey dances, hips and arms and head and body -- everything in tandem, smooth, captivating -- until Dex has to look away, hoping Nursey doesn’t disappear in the three seconds it takes to collect himself. 

There’s always Nurse being stupid and clumsy too, of course. Tripping up and down stairs; ramming into people, tables, even walls; spilling drinks on himself and on others. But, somewhere along the way it became just as endearing as it was annoying. It became a part of Nursey that Dex couldn’t imagine him without. 

It’s the look in Nursey’s face, caught somewhere between flat and disbelieving and something open and hopeful that makes Dex steel himself, and continue. 

“Not just kegsters, either. Just… finding you in the Haus after a shit day. Studying at Annie’s. That time you showed up at my dorm with a pizza and beer, knowing I’d had that terrible econ midterm earlier. Even your shitty jokes. Even occasionally when you say “chill” and it’s infuriating as ever but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. 

“Because it’s you saying it.” 

By this point Dex is somehow just slightly out of breath, feeling like he’s bared more than he meant to. But he doesn’t regret it a single bit as he watches Nursey’s eyes grow less muted, as he watches the faintest of blushes rise in Nursey’s face. They’re standing closer together than he remembers, and it’s easy at this proximity to see the tinge of pink spreading across Nursey’s cheeks. 

Then, quieter than the rest: “You haven’t told me to chill since you came back from winter break.” 

Slowly, giving Nursey enough time to step back, to pull away, anything, Dex lifts his hand to the place where Nursey’s neck meets his jaw, fingers sliding over the shorn hair at the back of Nursey’s neck, pulling them closer together. 

“It’s chill, Poindexter,” Nursey whispers then, and Dex can’t help the small laugh that escapes him, and then they’re kissing, slotting together like they were made for each other. Dex can feel Nursey’s fingers curling into the hem of his shirt, slivers of heat skating over his skin. Both of Dex’s hands are wrapped around Nursey’s neck, fingers pressing gently over stubble and skin, exploring those invisible spiderweb cracks, smoothing over them. There’s a buzzing in his veins that sends sparks through him when Nursey presses a hand to the small of his back, pulling them closer. 

Dex hadn’t thought it was possible to be closer. 

They pull apart, breathing deeply, Nursey resting his head on Dex’s shoulder, nose pressing into the veins of his neck. Dex can’t help threading his fingers through Nursey’s curls, as his thoughts click into place, aligning. 

Nursey’s breath skates over Dex’s neck, and he says, quietly, “I believe you.”

**Author's Note:**

> no, everything is not fixed just because they kissed. but sometimes knowing someone is there for you is what you need to give you that first little boost towards getting better. 
> 
> i have ideas for a part 2 from nursey's pov, we'll see if i actually manage to get off my ass and make that a reality. 
> 
> if you ever feel like crying go listen to “you” by keaton henson. which, coincidentally, was what i was listening to for 80% of the time i was writing this. the other 20% was the rest of his album “birthdays.”
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](https://notchillnursey.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/jesperfxhey) babes


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